4, 5, and 7 for Joly for the character ask game? :D
4. how do you think you would react to this character in real life and vice versa? would you prefer be a million miles out of range, be amicable classmates, or fall desperately in love? (bonus: arrange a hypothetical date between yourself and this character. getting silly with it is encouraged)
Joly honestly seems like a delight? a little goofy maybe but eh he's in his 20s, he'll get a little more centered with age. I....I am not gonna date a guy in his 20s, put that one back in the oven, but I'd love to hang out with him. I think he'd be super fun to watch Star Trek with (probably latch onto all the minor characters and get super excited by all the Space Diseases), but also!! he'd be so fun to go to Weird Museums with! Take him to the Hall of Bad Taxidermy at the Buckhorn and have a laugh, good times. :D
5.ideal flavor of rotating for this character? crack them open and dissect them— do you want them tormented, pining, or being loved + comforted? do you have any specific scenarios you like to think about?
NOOOOOOO sads or angst
Joly should get to be happy always
Some characters I can handle seeing suffering; some characters I actively want to see suffering; but Joly should never have to deal with anything worse than Sitcom Stress Levels because of Improbable Hijinks (legle's or his own, either way!). I'm sure, as a character, he could handle suffering; he's basically the Hobbit type and they're tough little souls, but I don't ever wanna see him suffering.
7.do you have particular niche takes on this character? defend those takes. (openly controversial takes are permitted, but also: hyper-specific headcanons which you believe in and no one else has considered enough to disagree with yet. pick a hill to die on.)
...I don't think I have a Controversial Joly Take. I feel like we're all mostly agreed on Joly except for minor flourishes. Sweetheart, in a wacky throuple of some sort with Legle and Musichetta, has the kind of health anxiety a person gets from Chronic Conditions Syndromes . Likes cats.
hmmm OH , I think he is just Absolutely Amazing at card games . Like, he's twitchy in all kinds of weird ways no one can really read, he always looks innocent, he has all kinds of horrifying medical facts to drop into the conversation that utterly derail everyone else's train of thought and it's not as if he doesn't do that anyway so it's not even a tell!--and it drives other players up the wall but they can't get mad, because he is always like that.
He wins So Much Money.
1 for Joly? (I know you already got a Joly ask, but there's no such thing as too much Joly, right?)
None such thing!:D
1. Why do you like or dislike this character?
Jollllyyyyy :D He's friendly, he loves Science, he likes cats, he covers his friends' expenses without blinking , he takes his promises seriously, he doesn't take himself seriously; he's always thinking he's sick; he's actually always sick (huge Chronic Illness Mood); he tries to take care of his friends but in the least Mom Friend way possible; in the middle of an ongoing quarrel with his SO, when he's with a sympathetic friend giving him room to vent, he still has nothing bad to say about that SO, just a lot of gushing about how great she is; why would I not like this odd med student and his low-key weird life <3
Joly and Bahorel for https://www.tumblr.com/pilferingapples/737561961993256960?source=share this ask one :)
Again all the Amis qualify for a lot of these , like Ride or Die or Would Die For Each Other, and they're all Teaming Up to Do The Thing (try and get a Republic)
but in this specific case what the Thing they should and Do team up together to do is Clothes Shopping
Fashion is also the very specific thing the Mentor- Mentee relationship applies to , without Bahorel, Joly would still be wearing the equivalent of Free Promo T-Shirts From High School
but mostly they're just buddies goofing around you know? having fun. overthrowing the monarchy . like you do.
**standing in the middle of a battle zone, having just lost two of his dearest friends, hungry and thirsty and with no certainty about what’s coming ** “ LOOK A KITTY, obviously God is real and also Good if there are cats”
#relatable tbh
Idea for a story
…If I could fic, which I cannot, I would love to do something with how he and Bahorel got to apparently being gossip-and-feels buddies. They’re so obviously different, but they get one of the bigger bits of conversation that doesn’t involve Grantaire! when and how did they Click? And how illegal was what they were doing at the time? :D
Unpopular opinion
Not so much an Unpopular thing as just one that is maybe uncommon..?
There’s this line from the Conventionist when he’s talking with Myriel:
“L’homme ne doit être gouverne que par la science.”“Et la conscience”, ajouta la eveque.“C’est la même chose. La conscience, c’est la quantité de science innée que nous avons en nous.”
Man must be governed by science; Conscience is the amount of science innate within us.
From that lens, what Enjolras sees as Joly’s gift of science takes on a much deeper resonance–and one that works with what we see of him on-page , too. Joly’s focus on science all comes with a human-scale focus; no doubt he can get excited about trains and telegraphs too , but the science that occupies him is all on a much more intimate scale. It may go off on what we now think of as wacky tangents, but none of Joly’s experiments that we’re told of are harmful –much less than a lot of the standard medicine of his day, in fact. It’s all based on being immediately aware of surrounding environment and circumstance. And it’s all about human health and comfort, on a personal, workable scale.
Keeping an eye on your own weakness, treating it with compassion and an eye to how external factors are affecting it, while always being open to trying new things to be better,healthier (and of course, always remembering that You Are Mortal)–does that not sound like an approach Bishop Myriel might recognize? Even to seeing the goodness of God in the presence of small, easily overlooked creatures?
Joly’s a goofy good-natured nerd, and a lot about him is easy to read as silly– he is silly! But like the Amis as a whole, I think it’s a mistake to think he’s just silly. His cheerful, optimistic involvement is a promise that the Amis would never have lost their conscience in cold absolutism–would never have forgotten that innate science in themselves. No wonder Enjolras thinks it’s Joly’s greatest gift.
Favorite relationship
With Bossuet, obviously! I wish we saw more of them, but I love that their Dynamic is so clear from the little we do see–the constantly high-energy fussbird who wants to poke at everything and the laid-back-to-the-point-of-becoming-a-mural guy, Goofballs United:D. (Granted Joly is also part of one of one of the few heteromances in the book that seem at all potentially good though; I really appreciate that even when he’s fighting with Musichetta he has nothing bad to say about her, he’s just sad about the fight– I just don’t see enough of Musichetta for it match the onpage relationship with Legle.) Either way , though, what a good bean.
Favorite headcanon
aah I have a lot– but the one that I am always loyal to and thus I suppose My Favorite is that he is chronically ill, but with something like allergies that happens in Episodes and which no one in his era has yet figured out, so he sometimes gets obviously super sick and then…it Goes Away and no one knows why. The social and personal issues attending an undiagnosed Mystery Condition (and which yes, I am unfortunately familiar with) are things that I think play into Joly’s character as we’re shown it very well.
Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character:
Musichetta obviously of coursally ; Legle too also ! (I very, very occasionally see him shipped with other people and I don’t Mind, but it never occurs to me as a thing on its own?)
that seems like enough for a med student:P
My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character:
also possibly Legle depending on how you read them?
My unpopular opinion about this character:
I don’t think it’s exactly unpopular, but I think he’s quick to diagnose himself independent of med school, but also specifically because of an existing illness/disability that he never can quite pin down; and he was drawn to medical science initially because of that wish to figure out what was going on with his health and then Science! took off from that point
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:
I wish he and Combeferre had any dialogue with each other honestly! Bring on the SCIENCE TEAM
Favorite friendship for this character:
I mean, Grantaire, obviously, but also Bahorel-- I love his dynamic with both of them!
My crossover ship:
..even in crossover I can’t really imagine shipping him with anyone but his canon partner(s)?? Uh. Joly/ the Enterprise Medbay, he’d flip. :D
This one’s for @lawisnotmocked ! A Further Elaboration of Hugo’s linking of cats and revolutionaries!
For this I did a word search on the Hapgood for any mention of “cat” or “cats”, “kitten”, “kittens”, “tom” and “feline”. There may have been a couple cat mentions I missed with that method, but I caught quite a few! And they make for a pretty consistent metaphor, too! Between me and Hugo, this is a long post, so under the cut for length!
The first Cats of the Republic get a mention pretty early, during 1817, in Bombarda’s (1.3.5). And it gets a lot of Mention! (all bolding mine):
"It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief of Police Anglès to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of Paris, terminated with these lines:—
“Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats. The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. (Non-Cat comments snipped) ...In short, it is an amiable rabble.”
Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too “rose-colored” a light; it is not so much of “an amiable rabble” as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury... He is Napoleon’s stay and Danton’s resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys...It is thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing but la Carmagnole, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will free the world.
I’ve included most of this long passage here because it ties into some pretty obvious other imagery later!
I’m not gonna try to myth- or history- check Hugo here because it’s not the point of this post; the point is, look at all this imagery and cat-association he’s giving us! Cats the animal of Minerva, “the very image of liberty”! The power of a Parisian’s song to drive a revolution! Epic rage hair! The Parisian, says Hugo, is like the cat, it is “heedless”,“indolent” , “frivolous”,”lazy” -but it can transform into a lion, and even as a cat ,is a symbol of Liberty in a Republic.
Then we move on , and our next Revolutionary Cat Mention of course shows up in 3.4.1, when one lands right in the center of our actual revolutionaries:
Courfeyrac had, in fact, that animation of youth which may be called the beauté du diable of the mind. Later on, this disappears like the playfulness of the kitten, and all this grace ends, with the bourgeois, on two legs, and with the tomcat, on four paws.
Courfeyrac is a kitten! And he’ll grow up to be a good Parisian Cat, no doubt, ready to turn into a lion at a moment’s notice.
Oh, here’s a moment for a Fans of LM Animal Symbolism! From 4.11.2, Gavroche On The March:
The gossips of the Rue de Thorigny busied themselves only with their own concerns. Three of them were portresses, and the fourth was a rag-picker with her basket on her back.
All four of them seemed to be standing at the four corners of old age, which are decrepitude, decay, ruin, and sadness...Things of this nature were said:—
“Ah, by the way, is your cat still cross?”
“Good gracious, cats are naturally the enemies of dogs, you know. It’s the dogs who complain.”
“And people also.”
“But the fleas from a cat don’t go after people.”
“That’s not the trouble, dogs are dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many dogs that it was necessary to put it in the newspapers. That was at the time when there were at the Tuileries great sheep that drew the little carriage of the King of Rome.
The opinion on the street, from the poor women who really know things at this level: dogs are dangerous, and cats are the enemies of dogs. What a statement, given the most prominent dog in the book!
And of course, in chapter 5.1.2, the final solid Revolutionary Cat of the Republic, sighted at the Corinth, the very image , not of Liberty now, but of the evidence of God’s care in Creation!:
Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter (a cat in Corinth!), extracted philosophy from it.
“What is the cat?” he exclaimed. “It is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: ‘Hullo! I have committed a blunder.’ And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected.”
These are our most obvious links, and they are very clear; the people of Paris--indecisive, fickle, and hedonistic-- are cats. But they are cats who are also lions, and lions and the revolution and the barricade in particular get linked a lot. Just a few mentions: “(The army) gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion’s den.” (4.14.4); “The barricade once scaled had a mane of lightning flashes. The assault was so furious, that for one moment, it was inundated with assailants; but it shook off the soldiers as the lion shakes off the dogs” (5.1.21)
And, of course;
“All at once (Enjolras) threw back his head, his blond locks fell back like those of an angel on the sombre quadriga made of stars, they were like the mane of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo” 5.1.5
EPIC PARISIAN RAGE HAIR, in its true form as a lion’s mane!:P
I joke, but there really is a nice clear line of Paris As Cat/POTENTIAL REVOLUTIONARY WERELION running through the novel! It’s about as consistent as Javert’s dog metaphors (and wow someone could probably right a paper on Javert/the cops as dogs and Paris As Cat in Les Mis).
These are of course not the only mention of these animals in the novel-- Valjean gets compared to a lion a lot (...which , now that I think of it: of course Hugo would make his symbolic Jesus Man an Honorary Parisian By Metaphorical Association:P) and getting into the lion/ cat dichotomy would make this post way longer than it already is. And there’s another character who gets a lot of cat imagery that I want to get into in another post. But the Cat Of Revolution is really consistent on its own, and deserves head scritches! er, and citation.
Domestic aspects of the revolution?? Pls explain this seems interesting
Oh geez let’s see if I can keep this brief and readable! I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT, surprising nobody(also I *know* there are other people with comments to make on this around, maybe someone will add on?)!! Bear with me, Nonny, I swear I work my way around back to Joly by the end! Prepare for XTREEEEME simplifications of incredibly complex social issues of the day!
Also, Content Warning for Discussion of Intensely And Somewhat Bizarrely Binarily Gendered Concepts, Because Society.
Anyway it’s commonly noticed (among fancademia, academia pays not a lick of attention to this stuff that I’ve found) that the Amis in their intro have a bit of a sliding scale of, well, Various Concepts really, from Enjolras at one end to Grantaire at the other. And one of the very obvious concepts is “The Domestic” as thought at the time would have it–that would include women, romance, family, home life, housekeeping–all the things that could also be summed up as “Women’s Sphere”, you know?
And on the other end was The Political– public life, politics in the sense of Actual Government Action, military Whatever, Economics-with-a-Capital E, The Patriarchy, etc. Manly!
And obviously these things have a lot of overlap! But they were seen as Spheres and being Complementary rather than, IDK, Inherently Unified.
Also, as suggested above, suuuuuuper gendered. Like whoa gendered. I’m not getting into this and the evolving concept of gender roles in the 19C the way it deserves because that would take semesters of lectures and essays I am not remotely qualified to write but like. Consider it noted, right?
This concept of Domestic is exactly what Enjolras rejects. Hugo goes to some length to make it clear that this is what Enjolras rejects. That’s what the whole thing about him not being moved by the bare breast of Evadne and thinking flowers are only good to hide swords and giving the Abyssal Glare to women who try to flirt with him is about–he rejects the importance of Family Life, Women, Romance, etc etc.* Enjolras, when introduced, is 100 percent About The Manly Political Aspect of the Revolution and of the Republic.
On the other end of the list, Grantaire cares about nothing at all in the Manly Political Sphere. “He loves the girls and he loves good wine”, but really what he loves is personal, domestic -type connections. He doesn’t care a single damn about the government or abstract social theory or social ideals or any of it. He loves Enjolras, he loves his friends, his knowledge of Paris is entirely framed in personal, home-comfortish ways— he knows the best places for dancing, dating, dinner . (Grantaire being the internally incoherent disaster man he is, he starts his arc unwilling to admit even to loving his friends, because even that is too much commitment for him. But the narrator is tattling on him from the get-go.)
Obviously the idea that these things are complete separate or genuinely separable is absurd. But that’s the social concept Hugo is dealing with in this regard!
–Also obviously, there is a certain Secret Sneaky Crossover Link here and it’s Friendship, but Friendship And The Amis is like. A Mini-novelette length essay if I ever have the focus. I’m not good at focus, as we’re seeing!
ANYWAY! From Enjolras to Grantaire the Amis generally take up an increasing weight of “domestic”associations. Combeferre and Jehan are, like Enjolras, very much about Ideas and Ideals and Politics and Philosophy, though their philosophy is increasingly more concerned with those domestic aspects of society (women, families, children, feelings ). Feuilly, Courfeyrac, and Bahorel are very much About the Manly Man World of politics–they’re all Actiony and Political and even Combative, tied to Politics and Work and Socializing in a Very Activist Way. But Feuilly gets more family-linked language in his intro than Enjolras or Combeferre do, and Feuilly’s family is dead. Courfeyrac rejects an aspect of his family identity, but we hear about it!
Bahorel, coming after the Balancing Point that Courfeyrac represents, is explicitly linked not just to concepts of family , but in a happy relationship to his own Actual Family, and their history– and he personally holds this up as part of his identity, too. (We also hear more specifics about Bahorel’s fashion choices in just his intro than we do about Enjolras or Combeferre’s or Feuilly’s in ever– another Domestic, Personal signifier.) After Bahorel, things take a massive turn for the Personal and Domestic in Intro-land. Bossuet gets a whole story about his family background,and dating stories, and ..well, and Joly (who in his turn gets all his science being directed into personal concerns and home treatments and furniture arranging , like…this is a very homey couple of revolutionaries here) Bossuet and Joly are explicitly, practically linked at the start, and then again repeatedly and at length in other passages in the novel. They have separate characters, but a major part of both those characters is this..well..pair-bond. Between two people who live, eat, and sleep together. Super domestic! AND NOW the “of the Revolution” part!
In Preliminary Gayeties–well, a lot happens. And it’s all, again, domestic as hell. They eat, they drink, they support a friend in a very (specifically!) not political way. And in this chapter with a title that echoes the chapter title of children being raised at the convent –seriously the domestic coding is intense – their personal bond is not only stressed again, it’s pretty much established as key to their function as political actors. “They are what the subordinate monks are called, BINI”– the bini were, as established, monks who were supposed to go out into the world paired, to support and aid each other in carrying out their Divine Mission. In this case the Divine Mission is trying to bring about the Republic–and in this chapter we specifically see them doing their double-act as part of leading a friend back to the cause (who keeps Grantaire where the barricade is? Who’s Grantaire quoting with “J’en suis”? Yeah.) , relying on personal connection and simple, domestic comforts to work.
And to those who will say “oh come on, they’re just a couple of dorks hanging out”– yeah. They are. That’s kind of the Point.
Because that’s the thing,–there’s no way to completely separate the Political and the Personal , the Public and the Domestic. Any modern reader has probably heard “The Personal is Political” to the point of it wearing flat, but, well, it is . And the political is personal, too– if someone’s mother can be The Republic, if they can take Humanity and Justice for their mother and father, then they can make their friends their republic, too; they can seek justice and progress and societal balance through personal connections and friendship and just being kind. And in fact people kinda have to; the systemic plays out on the personal level, after all. A major part of Enjolras’ character arc is getting to the point where he can embrace that personal domestic aspect and understand its importance to the (per Hugo) Divine Ideal. But Joly and Bossuet are already there; it’s what they are.
Sources!
There’s too many things to mention about the Gender Role stuff and I’m doing synthesis more than specific quotes, but: start with Socialism’s Muse by Naomi J Andrews and follow the bibliography from there if you’re really wanting to get into it.
For the Bini stuff, please look at @barricadeur‘s excellent posts on the topic; I’m particularly referencing this one, which has a bucket o’sources on The Importance of the Buddy System in Catholic Thought, including Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and , you know, the Gospel.
* this should not be taken as me arguing that he isn’t in any way queer coded; I think he is, it’s just in a very era-specific way and I don’t think this is really where it comes in. But that’s definitely an even longer post.
Just answered for Legle, so just Joly here!general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bangBahorel at least seems to think Joly’s got legs worth showing off, and I trust him in these mattershogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff THEY ARE AND REMAIN FRENCH , Joly is totally in Nerd House of any AU thoughbest quality: his keen awareness of the presence of kitties in all circumstances for all his supposed hypochondria and irritability, Joly is really intensely optimistic and I think that’s what underlies a lot of his sort of--daring? , both politically and scientifically. He fundamentally believes there is a Better Way and it Can Be Discovered Through Study, and he’s willing to take a lot of chances and hear a lot of wild ideas in the course of finding that better way, because IT DEFINITELY EXISTS. Because...because cats. Okay, Joly. Hard to argue with that, really. worst quality: he is perhaps not entirely as hard-headed and pragmatic as a scientist might benefit from being. Just maybe. ship them with: Musichetta, Bossuet, annnnd that’s really it? Joly seems pretty darn happy with that setup. brotp them with: Bossuet, Grantaire,Bahorel, Combeferre, Prouvaire (there is hardly ever anything with the two Eccentric Cuties but there should be because it’s a delightful set of character interactions) needs to stay away from: people who fail to appreciate him u_u , and also armed monarchistsmisc. thoughts: You know how Hugo says (through the Conventionist) that Conscience is the quantity of innate Science in the human soul? And Enjolras thinks of Joly’s Science as the most obvious strength he brings to the cause? ...I think about that a lot.
